George C. Comstock, the third director of
Washburn Observatory, had a long and interesting career at Wisconsin. Born
in Madison, he did his undergraduate work at Michigan
under James Watson. From him Comstock learned the classical astronomy
of stellar positions and celestial mechanics. He had one year of graduate
work at Michigan before
going to Madison as Watson's assistant in 1880, and remained after the
latter's death as E.S. Holden's assistant. At
Wisconsin, Comstock also studied law at the UW Law School in
his ``spare time", to have an alternate career path. He was admitted to the
bar in 1883 but never practiced. From 1885-7 he was on the Ohio State
faculty with a summer working at Lick Observatory;
then in 1887 became associate director back at Washburn Observatory. Two
years later he succeeded to the full directorship, and kept the post until he
retired in 1922 at the age of 67.

All Comstock's research was in positional astronomy, and he considered his
most important work to be the measurement of stellar aberration and
atmospheric refraction. He also measured double stars with the 15-inch
Washburn refractor. His main duty at UW was teaching, mostly ``practical
astronomy" for civil engineering students. Comstock wrote several text books
on astronomy, surveying, and least squares. He was the first
head of the UW Graduate School, set up by President
Charles R. Van Hise in 1904. Comstock was a highly effective
administrator, and did much to build up research at UW. His own most
successful students were Sidney D. Townley, Joel Stebbins, and Sebastian
Albrecht.

Because of his legal training, Comstock was involved as an officer in many
scientific societies. He was one of the organizers of the AAS, its first
secretary, and later its vice president, then president. He retired in 1922,
and was succeeded by Stebbins, whom he helped to bring back to Madison
from Illinois. After his retirement, Comstock lived in Beloit until his
death in 1934.